long still sea
by Senri
Summary: Spoilers for chapter 217 and the rest of the series. At the docks, Rin makes a different decision. Here is everything that comes after (and none of it is any easier to figure out than the journey leading up to it was). Written for Yuletide 2012.


The land turned a shade of blue she'd never seen, and then disappeared into the distance. Figuring out which way they were going became impossible. Rin stared in the direction she thought was homewards until she admitted there was no point, and turned away to find a place to sit out of the sea wind and contemplate the trouble she'd blundered into now.

She'd never been on water as deep as this before.

It was also, she thought, after contemplation failed to unearth any pearls, the most motley crew she'd ever seen. That included the mugai-ryu (merely seedy) and the itto-ryu, the whole gang stalking right into her house (horrifying). However, this gang was just pathetic. One bullet-riddled, miraculously living sword goddess. One immortal with what was apparently an ogre's arm grafted to his shoulder. One revolutionary missing an arm. One guy whose mother had crossbred with a rooster, judging by the hair. One pregnant sniper, a bald guy, all of the unnerving crewmen, and Rin.

It would be miraculous if the boat wasn't made a floating abattoir before they got wherever they were going.

Wherever they were going, which – when asked – the captain said: "Can't say, Miss."

His smile was wonderfully pleasant and deeply unsettling for it. "I'm sorry, but who told you that?" Rin finally said, after a long moment where neither of them moved.

"The master with the hair, Miss. I believe he said there's unfortunate history between you and my current employer?"

"Well, yes." Damn Magatsu, there was no question who'd spoken up about that. There was also no denying the bad blood. Rin bit her tongue and then went on. "But what do you expect me to do? I mean, we can't sail the boat."

"Employer sets the rules, Miss. Can't tell you."

"You know all those people who got on with me? They're some of the _most_ dangerous, you know. That guy with the arm is my employee! He's killed _more_ than one hundred people." She didn't think she'd have to say more.

"Is that so, Miss?"

The impervious good manners were also very irritating, Rin decided. "Yes, that's so."

"Well, can he sail the ship?"

That ended the argument. But only, Rin vowed, for the moment.

It had all happened at once. Casting a retrospective gaze towards her past self, Rin wondered how she could even have been thinking such things. They were such stupid things to think. She didn't even know what she'd been thinking – just, she knew they were stupid. What sense did it even make to not know? Yet there it was. Everything in her mind had been a hysterical morass, was the thing. It had happened too fast.

It had been Manji and Anotsu locked in rapid-fire combat, Anotsu down an arm. She'd been freezing cold, clutching Doa's jitte with numb fingers. She'd meant to rush Anotsu and just do it, get it over with. In fact, she had rushed him and then midway through really being ready to kill him choked again. She'd just hit him. The jitte had skimmed his ribs instead of punching a hole in his guts. She'd slammed into him, they'd both fallen hard on the gangplank. He'd been hot. Shaking. Manji had stopped. "Rin," she remembered his voice echoing into her spinning head. The memory of Anotsu's feverish eyes peering close at her face was much easier to come to. Breath puffed up in visible clouds from his lips. She felt close to fainting.

"Stop," she remembered saying, in an inchoate mumble. "Stop, stop."

"Quiet," Anotsu said to her, in a gurgle. "Shush, Rin. Quiet."

Nothing made sense. They all got on the ship together, Rin hypothermic, Anotsu and his woman with enough blood lost between the two of them to animate another person. Manji was okay. He was up an arm, he was doing better than all of them. Hyakurin and Giichi had been fine too, she thought? Yet they were along for the ride. Rin didn't even know how. Here they all were. None of it was sensible. And yet.

None of the crewmen would talk to her. It was too cramped a ship for privacy, and yet they skimmed around her like streams of water around a stone. They talked to Magatsu, who talked to Manji and was polite enough with her.

They all slept belowdecks, when there was sleep. Curled amongst the supplies. Rin's only clothes were still stiff with blood and there were only a few pallets to sleep on, curtains strung up to at least mock solitude. Anotsu was in the hold, and so was she. There was never a better opportunity for an assassination. Rin went and waited at the curtain that concealed him and the woman, and stayed there until the crewman treating them came back out. He had the same pleasant demeanor as his captain and the same face that reflected nothing, and when he saw her he came towards her with the same amiable look and Rin knew he meant to herd her right out onto the deck again. She lifted her chin, not ready to be chivvied this time. "I want to see Anotsu."

"He's still in recovery, Miss," the man said, but then Anotsu's voice came from behind the curtain: "Let her by."

The doctor-sailor didn't look happy, but Rin hustled around him before he could complain any further. Maybe he stayed on outside, but if she decided to do anything, well. Even the best doctor couldn't do much to treat a throat-cut.

Anotsu was there with his woman. It looked like all the spare pallets were piled up under him and her. Rin squatted and then sat on the tilting floor, narrowing her eyes at him. "You look terrible." And in fact Anotsu looked deathly, his face pale with sweat standing out on it, his sharp face gaunt and deep lines of pain and fatigue around his eyes.

His woman was there with him. She was wrapped up in bandages, wrapped up in blankets, and awake. The look she gave Rin had something of a slight smile to it. Rin looked away to Anotsu's frown, which remained haughty as ever. "Don't presume," he began, Rin studying the hollow of blankets where she thought she'd have seen his arm if he still had it.

"Oh, what's wrong with it now? I'll presume all I want," Rin said recklessly back.

"I'm not surprised, you chit." Anotsu shifted, had the temerity to roll his eyes up, as if asking, _why me?_ As if there weren't reasons enough.

"I won't be merciful with you next time," Rin threatened, and he sighed.

"Well, it seems you have me. Makie," A nod in the woman's direction, "Is currently unarmed and probably still too injured to adequately defend me even if she had one of those guns. As well you can see I am also handicapped."

He was arm-icapped. Rin didn't say that. "Heaven forfend she'd go around blowing holes in this ship anyway, I think a leak is just what would make life better around here, don't you?"

"Is the situation _very_ dire? Have I missed news of someone's _death?_ "

"Yes, sorry, your guy with the ridiculous hair got thrown off the deck by Manji yesterday, and he was eaten by a shark."

"It must have been his wandering shade who reported to me that everything was proceeding as well as could be expected this morning, then."

"He's yet another ghost to haunt you," Rin said, "And remind you of all the trouble you've caused everyone. Which you deserve by the way!"

Anotsu shut his eyes, taking a long breath, face sallow. "I have had the good luck to be unplagued by ghosts. Which, no, with your profound belief in my wickedness I do not expect you to believe."

"Good, if you die I don't have to worry about you then," Rin said, and added as an afterthought: "Or if I _kill_ you."

"Please," Anotsu said.

Makie said, "Kagehisa, be kind." She said it gently.

 _Kagehisa. Be kind._ Rin snorted in utter disbelief. Makie shifted in her wrapped-up cocoon, opened her eyes and gave that same wan, winsome smile she'd given Rin when Rin came in, only even more so. She was horrifically picaresque even recovering from however many bullet wounds – Rin hadn't wanted to count.

"I _am_ going to kill you," Rin said.

"When you have the perfect opportune moment?" said Anotsu.

"Please, you two," Makie said. "Perhaps you can fight when we're not in such a confined area." She said it with all appearance of seriousness. Rin stared at her suspiciously. You'd never guess she was a monster, from the way Makie gazed kindly back.

"I'm not kidding," Rin said, as grandly as she could muster, and then (more to Anotsu): "By the way, we're all sharing the hold. I don't know how it smells _worse_ where you are."

"A quick death would be a mercy compared to listening to your jibes," Anotsu said.

Rin left feeling huffy, but glad – not glad – glad they knew where they stood.

Hyakurin was on deck when she got up there. It was cold on the water, and the breeze never stopped, but Hyakurin was sitting with her legs dangling over the edge of the boat anyway, and she was drinking. Rin went and sat by her with a sense of beleaguered solidarity. At least she could count on Hyakurin to be irreverent and sensible, if nothing else in the world made sense.

"Hi there, sweetie," said Hyakurin. "How are you doing?" She tilted her flask towards Rin in invitation. Rin thought back to nearly dying of a swig of the strong stuff back when she first met the mugai-ryu, reached for the drink and took a sip. It tasted vile and burned all the way down. Rin passed the flask back and exhaled, breathing a small draft of fire.

"Hyakurin, why'd you come along?"

"Girl doesn't beat around the brush, does she?" It was said to nobody, perhaps the ocean breeze. Hyakurin's throat made a poetic line when she tilted her head back to take a long drink. "Well, little Rin, I gotta say it came as a surprise when mister snake-eyes invited you and your man along on his little cruise. I came along to keep both of you rubes out of trouble."

"What about Giichi?"

"I guess he came along to keep lil' ol' me out of trouble." Hyakurin leaned close and beamed.

She was half drunk, Rin thought, letting Hyakurin lean on her shoulder. "Isn't it a little early for that?"

"My dear, we are on a timeless sea." Hyakurin took another drink and offered Rin again. "There's no time not to be drinking. Life is too short not to drink."  
Rin took the drink and took another sip entirely to keep Hyakurin from drinking way, way too much. It cramped her throat on the way down and hit her stomach like a sick medicine. She grimaced and Hyakurin laughed. Rin kept the flask that time. "Are you going to kill him?" Rin asked resolutely. There was no need to say _who._ "It's your job, right?"

"Well, I myself have no personal investment in whether we dust this guy or not," Hyakurin said. "What d'ya say, little Rin? Should we make him bite it?"

"I'm just wondering why you don't," Rin said. "Isn't it your _job?_ Like I said?"

"Don't you want to?" Hyakurin whispered it into her ear. "I thought it was your big dream. You know Hyakurin won't judge."

Rin leaned away. Then back close. Hyakurin watched her close and sharp. Rested her forehead against Rin's shoulder, and easily slipped an arm around her waist.

"It doesn't feel _fair,_ " Rin confessed. Hyakurin laughed at her, then gave her a squeeze.

"You are so sweet, you know?"

"Don't condescend to me," Rin said, throat feeling tight. "I want to make sure it's… right."

"There's no right in this world." Hyakurin's arm stayed around her. Her breath tickled Rin's neck. "Well, as far as I'm concerned… I wasn't so attached the boss, you know? Like I said, I ain't attached to this guy eating it."

"What about Giichi?"

"Won't if I ask him to not. I think."

"Okay," Rin said.

"You know, it's a problem," Hyakurin said. "These guys, the crew, they're kinda holding us hostage, right? Like they're the only ones who know how to navigate this tub. I don't know about you but dying of thirst at sea because a bunch of sailors get hacked off we kill their boss of the hour is not my idea of a way to go."

"Yeah," Rin said. "That occurred to me."

She drank the rest of Hyakurin's flask, and then Hyakurin held her hair back while she threw up off the back of the boat. The crewmen baited hooks and tried to fish. "Your puke might bring them up, Miss," they said politely. "An ocean fish will do anything for a scrap, you know."

She went back to see Anotsu again. He was eating a little, cold rations – there wasn't much to have on the ship that was hot. Even the thought of making strong tea (which they did) made Rin nervous. What if something caught on fire? They were traveling in a little convoy but it seemed like a ship could pretty easily burn down in the time it would take for somebody to rescue them. She could see Anotsu and Makie going down in the hold and her and Manji and Hyakurin and Giichi getting left to drown. If not Magatsu.

"What is it now?" Anotsu said. Makie was turned over and over in her blankets, face as still as the moon, apparently asleep. Rin sat on the floor again and didn't trust it.

"It's nothing, but I want to know where we're going."

"I'm not sure if it's better or worse that you're coming to chat with me about nothing of any particular import," Anotsu said, and took a bite with his chopsticks, with great care. "Why do you ask?"

"I left Renzo at Master Sori's," Rin said. "I want to be able to pick him up."

"Well, you might have to backtrack," Anotsu said. Bite. "Who's Master Sori?"

"Nobody," Rin said, and amended: "My dad's friend." Anotsu transported a bean to his mouth in silence.

"Who d'you think will take the reins in Edo now?" Rin said. "You killed off Habaki back there…"

"And the one who took over after him," Anotsu said. "Who knows? Probably someone much like one of them. I'm not sure which one Edo deserves more."

"What are you going to do?"

"Start a school, perhaps." More beans, with great concentration. "I could see myself bringing students to tears."

"Manji used a sword with one arm, you know."

"As you're aware, he possesses some unfair advantages." Anotsu gave her a pointed look, which Rin held for the principle of the thing. She glanced away with relief when he went back to his meal. Watched Makie's sides rise and fall, the movement barely perceptible with the thick wrapping of blankets.

"Or maybe you'll still die," Rin said.

"Maybe you'll still kill me," said Anotsu. With all his concentration, Rin still looked when his chopsticks rattled against the bowl, made into drumsticks by the uncontrolled tremor of his hand, lacquered wood rattling against the lacquered bowl clamped between his thighs.

She rose, intending – she knew not what. To dash the rations all over his blanketed lap, perhaps. To do something else as shameful as reaching a hand to help.  
He glared at her instead. He glared at her until his hard gaze chased her out of the blanketed enclosure that housed him and the woman, and Rin carried herself out of the hold and back to the deck for her own sake, to breathe air that didn't stink of stale sweat and pain, and the humiliation of someone accustomed to strength discovering his pernicious weakness.

Manji was there on deck. Like Hyakurin, equipped with a flask, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders to cut out some of the breeze. Rin went to him in a hurry and slipped under the blanket without asking. Manji shifted, grunted, and then accommodated her. Rin rested her head against his shoulder and closed her stinging eyes.

"I don't know what to do," she mumbled to him, under cover of the smell of booze, close wool and the heat of his body.

"Kid, I think you are the worst avenger who was ever born," Manji said. Sighed, drank.

"You're not even getting paid for this," Rin said. "Sorry."

"Don't sweat it. I've got all the booze I could want and a place to rest my head, ain't nobody trying to kill me. I'm doing fine, unlike you."

"You're right that I'm _bad_ at this," she wanted to cry. "Mother and father would be so ashamed."

"Look, I never knew your old man or the missus, but you think they'd want you to make yourself miserable over not being able to _kill_ somebody for them? Most parents I think _don't_ want their kids killing anyone."

"But it would be fair. It'd pay him back," Rin said. "He _started_ it." But she remembered that wasn't even true. It had started a long time before him or her.

"You want peace, right?" said Manji. "Kid, I think sometimes getting peace means somebody has to swallow a fishhook. Or some shit. Or just has to take it."

"It's horrible."

"Yeah, well, that's why so many people end up dead." Manji drank, again. Wrapped an arm around her. Rin felt cradled and safe, blinking tearily against his sleeve. "Rin, it's up to you. I'm not going to kill the guy unless you ask me. Or you can kill him if you want. I'll take Magatsu if he has anything to say about that. You know Hyakurin and baldie aren't going to lift a finger for his life."

"What about Makie?" At Manji's puzzled grunt, she amended: "The woman."

"I don't think she'll have the stomach to slice you in half, just my opinion."

"I'm so sorry, Manji," Rin said.

"What for?"

"Your quest. You're supposed to kill a _thousand_ bad guys, right? But you're barely closer than when you started and it's all so much more complicated than I ever thought it would be."

"It's all right."

They huddled together against the touch of ocean breeze. Silence, silence.

"I just wish I didn't _have_ to hurt anyone." Rin said it, and the second after, knew she didn't _have_ to.

Just, sometimes, it was hard not to _want_ to.

Manji, stolid, didn't comment. Just stayed with that squeeze around her shoulders, with his normal arm. "Just one thing," he said. "If you decide to chop of his head or do whatever you want to do, do it when we're docked, all right?"

"Yeah, I know," Rin sniffled. "We don't know what to do with the ship."

The hold, Anotsu and Makie's enclosure in it, smelled as sick as it ever did. It didn't let up. Rin went back nevertheless, crept in with quiet feet, pulled the curtain close again behind her. It was somehow warm in there, maybe the body heat, close and with that sour stink of two sick people still on the border.

Anotsu's face revealed in dim light was pinched even in its sleep. He looked still and sad and tired. Someone who'd lost everything, but not quite everything. Makie's sloe-eyes were open. She smiled her still smile at Rin when she came in and said on a breath, "Sit."

"It's all right," she went on, when Rin hesitated. "I'm sure he won't mind. And neither do I. It's been some time since we ever spoke, hasn't it?"

"Not really," Rin said.

"Then, since we had a conversation."

"I'm not sure we've ever."

"You're right," Makie said. "I suppose I was busy with your bodyguard when we really met."

"How did you learn to fight like that?" Rin asked. "I mean… when it comes to training…"

"They'd never train a woman like me," Makie said. "You're right."

"Then how?"

"I had little teaching. Play with my father's students… with my brother… I used to tumble for my family's amusement, you know."

"Just from that?" She could have turned green with envy. All the sweat and blood and she didn't have a tenth of Makie's skill to show for it.

"It was a gift that did me no good," Makie said. "It's only ever burdened me with hardship upon hardship. This land has no kindness for women who take up blades, as you must  
know."

Rin had been laughed at, rejected, spit upon, for her bad luck and then for the dream born out of the ashes of her life. She didn't have a thing to say to that, no arguments. It was too true.

"He won't mind, you know," Makie said. "If you are the one who kills him. You have more right to it than any other. And you have been the one to watch over him."

"What about you?"

"I wish that he lives," Makie said. "And that I live with him. And I don't wish any harm to you and yours. I can see that he did you harm."

She couldn't even think whether or not it was something smart to admit: "He said that too."

"Yes," Makie said. "I think he understands it better now."

In a dream, she made a decisive lunge. Makie was somewhere else, maybe dead on the ground – maybe that was only a dream. She wasn't there to get in the way or feel any suffering at the sight of Rin's body-slam into Anotsu, the jitte running true all the way through him, piercing in one side and coming out the other with the force of Rin's quick desperation blow.

They didn't fall together on the gangplank. Rin fell, sense lost, and Anotsu fell backwards too, but nothing caught him; sans arm and some fingers, still holding the jitte, his body fell backwards into the sea.

Manji's hands caught her shoulders. Manji's arms lifted her up. Anotsu's body, when they fished it from the water, was washed clean of blood, pain washed clean from his face, his expression stiff and dead and frozen by the frigid sea.

They must be close, Rin thought. They couldn't be at sea for so much longer. She didn't think Anotsu would leave his beloved Japan, where he'd caused so much strife. The dissenting patriot. She wanted to hit him again like she had in the cave, slap after slap across his face, until she saw his tears too. He'd seen so many of hers.

The hold, still warm. The chamber with Anotsu and Makie, still close and dim. As familiar to her as her own little nest where she slept between the supplies on this weird journey. Anotsu stirred without being touched, opened his narrow eyes and looked into her face. Not calm, but not evidently afraid: still with pain written on him, but not saying anything either. Rin looked back at him. There was just silence between them. She thought: he's waiting for me to explain myself.

"We're almost at land, I think," Rin said, in a whisper. Makie was sleeping, she thought.

"Did you see birds?"

"Not yet, I just feel it."

"Your instincts shouldn't tell you that," Anotsu said. "I suppose I'll take your word for it for now."

"What should I do?" Rin asked.

Anotsu watched her, very still. "I'm surprised that's a thing you would ask of me."

"I want to kill you," Rin said.

"So?" He didn't move a muscle. "Do it."

"I want to just… _erase_ you," Rin said. "I want to erase the past. Everything that's come from it in my life is so horrible."

"If anyone could do that, we'd live in either a much more pleasant or a much more awful world. Rin, what will you do?"

"She doesn't want me to kill you," Rin said.

"You still could."

"Don't you want to live?"

"My grandfather tasked me with remaking Japan's sword schools." There still wasn't a flicker of motion besides him talking in his whole body. "I doubt I can do that now."

"You could still use a sword."

"It's much more risky for a one-armed mortal than it is for someone who can't die."

"I wish I knew what to do," Rin said, sounding tight even to herself. Anotsu watched her, so still. "It should be easy."

"Your mother was a brave and articulate woman," Anotsu said.

"I didn't say thanks for taking me by the arrows."

"I did owe you a favor. You don't have to thank me."

"I hate you so much," Rin whispered.

Anotsu said, "Rin. I'm sorry."

The silence between them echoed with those words for an instant. And then she started to cry. Couldn't help it. Tried to keep it quiet, as there was a sleeping injured woman only about a handspan away from her.

Anotsu watched her with a grave face. Closed his eyes after a long moment, face clenched, like he felt the deep pain of one arm gone all over again. "I did you an injustice," he whispered back. "You'd be within your rights."

"I just want to erase it," Rin wept, voice hiccupping. The words pulled out of her snarled and jagged, without her thinking them. "I hate you so much. Why didn't you do something else."

"I'm sorry." She could tell, in his shadowy voice, that he meant the pained words, and there was nothing else he could give her than that. Like an agony of twisting a barbed hook free from her heart; she wasn't sure if the words released something, or just sank into her flesh like a knife. She leaned her head down on her knees and cried and cried.

She didn't look, but she just knew somehow that Anotsu didn't even watch her, his face gnarled like the scarred bark of a tree as he bore his own pain and whatever guilt he might have felt. She'd dreamed of killing him by nights and also dreamed about another world where they'd never met, there had been no connection, maybe separately where they, and Makie, and Manji, and Hyakurin and Giichi, and even Magatsu, the prickly bastard, had felt simple happiness.

Outside it was early morning. Rin made her way to the deck railing and leaned on it, rubbed her face against it. The polished wood smeared away her tears with a cold hand. Calm, Rin, calm, she thought. Calm down. She wanted to hug herself against the cold.

The night was lightening up. Bright, pure blue dawn sky was coming up the horizon. The color was beautiful.

"Did you do it?" She recognized the voice, after a moment, as Magatsu's. He talked little enough to her with sulky manners but manners enough. At least he didn't sound angry.

Rin coughed and wiped her sleeve over her face. Lifted her head, coughed, sniffed, and spit into the sea.

"He's still alive," she said. "You can check on him if you want."

"That's good," Magatsu said. He didn't leave to check, but she saw him turn his head and put his hand on the back of his neck, awkward.

"You'd probably throw me into the sea if I had," Rin said.

"So Manji could flip all his shit and gut everybody? Yeah, smart."

"Are we landing soon?"

"It'll be today." So her instincts were right after all. "Are you going down, kid?" He sounded uncomfortable. The words pulled out of him by her silence.

"No. I'm staying here."

"Well, more power to you." His footsteps clomped over the deck, disappearing when he went below.

Rin watched the blue light of morning stretch up. She thought: a hot blade of vengeance leaving her heart, or a new cold blade of pain coming into it. There'd be pain for it either way. She wouldn't know if she'd chosen right for the longest of times.


End file.
